The woman pulled into the David Petraeus sex scandal is finally speaking out publicly — and she talks about being cyber-bullied by the former CIA director's ex-mistress and her own relationship with another top general.
Jill Kelley sat down with
The Daily Beast for her first interview since Petraeus resigned in November after having an extramarital affair with Paula Broadwell, his biographer.
Kelley, a wife and mother of three who is a figure on the Tampa society scene, became a player in the romantic tangle through her friendship with Petraeus.
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The 37-year-old Kelley acted as a social ambassador at MacDill Air Force Base, the headquarters of the joint command that Petraeus, 60, led not long before his retirement in August 2011. The four-star general's last assignment was to run the war in Afghanistan.
“I never met Paula in my life,” Kelley told The Daily Beast during a two-hour sitdown in Washington, and did not know that Broadwell had penned Petraeus' life story.
Kelley learned of the affair from Broadwell, in an anonymous email that her husband, Scott, opened under the the Yahoo account they share.
In the note, and others that followed, “there was blackmail, extortion, threats.”
“I knew I was being stalked," Kelley said, but the writing was so cryptic that "I didn’t even know it was a female.”
A person close to Kelley told The Daily Beast that the subsequent messages had a much harsher — even what could be described as a menacing — tone. The emails, which another source counted as fewer than 10, did not make any explicit threats and never suggested that the socialite stay away from Petraeus.
Kelley flatly denied that she and Broadwell were "romantic rivals," even though that is how news stories portrayed them.
"Think how bizarre that is,” said Kelley, who refused to speculate on whether Broadwell's motivation was jealousy.
Kelley went to the FBI about the emails, which touched off an investigation that led to Petraeus' downfall.
“I did what anybody else would have done when they were feeling threatened, to go seek protection from somebody I could trust,” she said.
Federal prosecutors declined last month to file charges against Broadwell over the emails after Kelley refused to proceed with the case. She worried about the impact on her family and friends.
“I just wanted to let them move on with their lives and not have to relive it,” she said.
The Justice Department's decision “makes a pretty bold statement about the content of the emails," Dee Dee Myers, Broadwell's spokeswoman, told The Daily Beast. "People can make their own judgments based on that.”
The FBI looked into Kelley during its probe and found emails that Kelley had exchanged with Gen. John Allen, Petraeus' successor in Afghanistan. They met at a surprise birthday party for Holly Petraeus.
Unnamed government officials have characterized the messages as flirtatious, but Kelley told The Daily Beast that they were both sent and received under the shared account with her husband and that Allen's wife was often copied on the notes.
Allen, too, maintains that the messages were harmless and that he never carried on with Kelley.
“We’re friends, good friends. His wife and me are good friends. Our children are friends,” she said.
Kelley estimates she and Allen traded only hundreds of emails, not the 30,000 that many news outlets have reported.
Kelley lashed out at the media for what she called lies and half-truths about her.
“As much as I appreciate that they want to be the first one to come out with a headline, regardless of whether they did any fact-checking, they have to consider the impact they have on our life and our children’s lives,” she said. “Just because it’s repeated doesn’t make it true. It was living a nightmare.”
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Kelley is particularly upset about the impact that the publicity has had on her husband.
“It’s obviously been very difficult for him. He’s an honorable guy.”
As for herself, Kelley wants people to know that she's "a dedicated mother, a loving wife,"who supports the troops and takes pride in feeding the homeless.
"We have a very happy, close family," she said.
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